


I Will Possess Your Heart

by maydei



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fix-It, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maydei/pseuds/maydei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezekiel may have asked Dean's permission to use Sam as his vessel—he may have even stolen Sam's permission with another face. But he didn't ask the one that mattered most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Possess Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Contribution to Day Three of Samifer Week 2013. It was going to be longer, but then I had to make an emergency trip home... and then Pokemon.

It was the sort of dream where Sam knew he was asleep, and it was the first time he was _properly_ asleep since he'd woken up in the passenger side of the Impala. It was warm here, peaceful, as he sat near the edge of a cliff and looked over to the water far below.

But, then.

Sam gripped the rock with his fingertips as a great and terrible roar split the air, so inhuman in its absolute fury that it made the hairs on the back of Sam's neck stand on end. He was on his feet in a second, but a head rush made his balance bend around him, and for a moment, Sam was so sure that he was going to fall—

—a hand gripped his sleeve and pulled him away from the edge. Sam gasped for breath, and gasped again when he realized that he had no idea who the man was who had saved him.

His face was guilty. Sam found that never bode well for him.

“Who are you?” Sam demanded, snatching his arm away and _carefully_ backing away, staying clear from the cliff. “What are you doing in my dream? Are you an angel?”

“Sam, I can explain—”

“How do you know my name?” Sam added. Panic crawled up his throat, gripping his tongue like a vise. He didn't like this, didn't like what this implied, didn't want to think about what this meant or could mean.

“I'm here to save you—”

But the man, the angel, _whatever_ he was, didn't get to finish, and this time it wasn't on Sam's account. For someone else had appeared behind him, dripping blood and oozing Grace, and threw the man from Sam's cliff into the nearest tree with a sickening _crack_.

“How _dare_ you?!” He roared, voice corrupted with a screeching overtone that sounded like electric feedback and the ringing of bells. “You had _no right!_ Not only have you violated _my_ claim, but you _stole_ his consent with the face of another. I will not let this go unchallenged.” The man stood with such presence that, even with his torn and bloody back to Sam, he looked like a king.

And then he turned around, revealing a familiar, _impossible_ face—the face of a tired, defeated man that had once held the Morning Star inside his skin as unfiltered power ripped through him from the inside out.

“Lucifer,” Sam breathed.

Lucifer took several long strides until he was only inches away, and Sam could not find the strength to deny him, even if his breathing was shallow and his heart filled with fear. Lucifer _tsk_ ed, soft and sympathetic, and though he truly looked as if he'd fought his way through Hell and very barely won (and perhaps he had), every move had purpose. His hands were smeared with blood as he reached up to cup Sam's sallow cheeks, turning his head from side to side with the utmost care, and though his borrowed blue eyes were lit from behind with a light that rivaled the sun, Sam felt no pain in witnessing it.

“Oh, Sam,” Lucifer sighed, his thumbs stroking over Sam's protruding cheekbones. He looked... sad. There were questions written on his face that Sam wasn't sure how to answer, the first and foremost being the silent _what happened to you?_ “Are you okay?”

“I don't understand,” were the first words to escape Sam's cracked lips.

The fury returned full-force to Lucifer's eyes, but not directed at Sam, _never_ at Sam. “I wouldn't expect you to, Sam; you had no way of knowing.” Lucifer turned, entirely deliberate, to face the man. Sam didn't miss the way that Lucifer stood between them like Sam would place himself between a monster and its unwilling victim. He wondered if it was not very much the same. The man, in turn, seemed to shrink back and recoil under the weight of Lucifer's full attention. “Isn't that right, Ezekiel?”

The man—or perhaps the angel, _Ezekiel_ —flinched. “I had consent—” he protested.

Lucifer cut him off with an angry hiss, wordless, but words unnecessary. He took a step toward him. “You got _permission_ from Sam's guardian, and an uninformed one, at that. At least _I_ offered Sam the choice—and he _chose,_ fully informed, with full consent. And you know, or you _should_ , that the permission of a human substitute is not acceptable when the real guardian is present.”

Ezekiel's expression twisted into a disgusted, uncomfortable thing. “I asked Dean. Dean gave me permission to use his visage, to do what I had to in order to save Sam's life.”

Lucifer snarled, a blade taking shape in his hand. “Dean—is—not—me!” He grit out, lunging forward to cross swords with Ezekiel. Lucifer's attacks seemed sloppy, almost as if Ezekiel were a worthy match—or that Lucifer were less of a match, but then—no, it was just Lucifer who was slow, whose movements were dragging, sluggish, one swing slurred into the next. Perhaps Lucifer really _had_ climbed out of Hell, and if this was the condition he was in, he couldn't afford to fight.

Sam couldn't afford to think like Lucifer was his friend, either—but of the two threats, he'd choose the more familiar one, any day.

“Stop!” Sam commanded.

The angels froze, turning to look at him with wary eyes.

“Where are we?” Sam demanded.

“Inside your dreams,” Ezekiel answered. When Lucifer glared, he added, “I'm possessing your vessel.”

“His _body_ ,” Lucifer snapped. “Sam is not just some empty vessel, he is _The Vessel_ — _my_ vessel, if he's anyone's.”

“Stop it!” Sam rubbed at his face, his heart skipping a beat when they came back smeared with rust-red. It took him a few moments to remember that the blood was not his own. “Skipping over the part where I don't _remember_ giving you permission, why are you inside me, anyway?”

“You're dying,” Ezekiel answered bluntly. “I'm in here so I can recover and so I can help _you_ recover.”

“You're draining power from his soul, you're not _recovering_ , and you're certainly not _helping_ him,” Lucifer countered, baring his teeth. He was still dripping blood, looking like a feral thing, but for once Sam was thankful to have that sort of conviction on his side. He gave Sam a wide-eyed, pleading look. “He's _leeching_ you, Sam. You need to force him out.”

“He'll die!” Ezekiel replied, face pale in the face of Lucifer's vicious intent. “You can't eject me, Sam, you _need_ me.”

Once, a long time ago, before the wall in his head was broken, Sam had memories of a different Lucifer—a Lucifer that cared about Sam's well-being, his happiness, his understanding. A version of Lucifer that had slaughtered _gods_ to allow Sam a chance of escape from a terrible end. Covered in blood and gore and grime, Sam could almost see the echo of that other Lucifer from all those years ago.

It was _that_ Lucifer, the Lucifer that _cared_ , that made eye-contact with Sam now, who spoke softly and urgently, all but _begging_ Sam's trust. “You _don't_ need him, Sam. He's all but powerless and he can't help you in half the ways I could, I can, I _will_. I won't ask you to let me in; those times are gone. All I need you to do, Sam... is wake up. You wake up, you force him out, and I'll be able to fix you.”

“But the angels...” Sam hesitated. “They... Fell. How are you gonna help me if you can't...?”

“I _can_ ,” Lucifer assured him. “Out there, Sam, we still have an unbreakable bond—Grace to soul. I can heal you, and I can do it from the outside.”

Sam's heart fluttered. “No possession?”

“No possession,” Lucifer agreed, offering a firm nod. “You can trust me, Sam; you can always trust me. And even if you feel you can't—I promised never to lie to you, never to hurt you or to trick you, and I never have. Ezekiel, he's done all three without you even knowing his name.”

Sam stared at him. Whether he liked it or not, this Lucifer seemed... different. He wasn't yet sure if the change was for better or for worse.

“Sam—” Ezekiel protested.

“Get out,” Sam ordered, finding the force of his will (hidden, dusty, unused and unpracticed for so long, but aching to be free) and letting it loose, pushing Ezekiel from the cavern of his mind and out of his awareness.

He snapped to being awake in a motel room, Dean launching himself out of the next bed—the windows were rattling, the radio was shrieking, and the door exploded inward as a figure stormed through. Sam recognized the figure as the spectacularly bloodstained Lucifer, and just in time for his breathing to falter and his vision to fade.

“What the—are you—Sammy, damn it! Sam! Get away from him!”

“If you value his life you _will not get in my way_ ,” Lucifer hissed, and Sam felt cold hands wrap around his wrists, feeling for his pulse. “Still breathing, heart still beating. Stay with me, Sam—that's right.” The cold chased his heartbeat from his veins to his heart, settling there in a way that wasn't so stifling as it was refreshing, rejuvenating. “Let me wash the rest of him out of you. He doesn't belong the way I did—can you feel that? Feel it, Sam, feel _me._ Your time isn't up yet; Death said it himself, it's your choice to stay. Would you really choose to leave Dean alone?” Sam felt an abject spark of guilt and misery. Lucifer latched onto it like a lifeline. “No, Sam, I know you wouldn't, not if you had another choice. You have a choice _now_. Don't leave me alone to mediate Dean and Michael, I'd never forgive you. It'll take all of us to set this right.”

“Damn it! I swear to god, if you hurt him—!”

“I would never hurt him!” Lucifer snapped. His hands traced up Sam's arms, coming back to cup Sam's cheeks as they had before. “There you are, Sam. Nice, strong heartbeat. I fixed all those tears in your veins from where the sulfur was burned out of your blood. No bleeding anywhere except that bleeding heart of yours.” A hand stroked back over Sam's head, pushing his sweat-damp bangs out of his face. “Just rest, now.”

A fingertip traced the edge of Sam's lower lip. He was far too exhausted to twitch away, but his lips fell open (whether in protest or acquiescence, he wasn't sure). He felt the fingertip trace a single circuit over his open mouth, and Sam let his breath bleed from his lungs.

Softly enough that Sam doubted Dean could pick up on it, he heard Lucifer's rasping voice whisper, “Angels are watching over you.”

He let the promise of safety and the softness of fingertips across his temple lull him to sleep.

 

 

 

 


End file.
